URL Encoder / Decoder
Encode or decode URL components and query strings.
How to use the URL Encoder / Decoder
Enter your values and pick a mode if the tool offers one.
Click calculate — results appear instantly, computed in your browser.
Copy the result or save the tool to your favorites.
Frequently asked questions
It converts characters like spaces and symbols into percent-encoded form safe for URLs.
To turn a percent-encoded string back into readable text.
It uses component encoding, which encodes reserved characters too.
No. Encoding and decoding run in your browser.
Malformed input shows an error message instead of a result.
About the URL Encoder and Decoder
This tool encodes text into a form safe to place in a web address, and decodes encoded URLs back into readable text. It handles the percent-encoding that browsers and servers rely on to pass data through URLs without breaking them.
Why URLs need encoding
URLs can only contain a limited set of characters. Spaces, and symbols such as ampersands, question marks, slashes, and equals signs, have special meaning in a web address or are not allowed at all. If you put raw text containing these into a URL, it breaks or is misinterpreted. URL encoding solves this by replacing unsafe characters with a percent sign followed by their hexadecimal code, so a space becomes %20 and an ampersand becomes %26. The encoded string travels safely and is decoded back at the other end.
How percent-encoding works
Each character that needs encoding is converted to its byte value in hexadecimal, prefixed with a percent sign. Because this scheme can represent any character, including non-English letters encoded as UTF-8, it lets URLs carry essentially any text. Decoding reverses the process, turning each percent-code back into the character it represents. This is why you sometimes see long strings of percent codes in a browser's address bar, especially in search queries and tracking parameters.
Where you encounter it
URL encoding is everywhere in web development. Query parameters that carry search terms, form submissions, redirect URLs passed as parameters, and API requests all rely on it. Anyone building web links programmatically, debugging why a URL is not working, or reading an encoded link to understand its contents needs to encode and decode. Getting it wrong is a common source of broken links and failed requests.
Component versus full URL encoding
There is a subtle distinction between encoding a whole URL and encoding a single component within it. A full URL must keep its structural characters like slashes and the protocol intact, whereas a value being inserted into a URL, such as a search term, should have everything special encoded. This tool uses component encoding, which is the right choice when you are preparing a piece of text to drop into a larger URL.
Privacy and related tools
Encoding and decoding happen entirely in your browser, so nothing you enter is transmitted. If decoding fails, the input contains a malformed percent-sequence. For encoding binary data as text see the Base64 Encoder / Decoder, and for working with page metadata the Meta Tag Generator. Conversion is instant.